


Real Stories

by AquariusRose07



Category: The Greatest Showman (2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-23 19:19:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17086199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AquariusRose07/pseuds/AquariusRose07
Summary: Carwheeler Week Day 5Prompt: "Off To A World We Call Our Own" (AU)“Lie down,” Phillip told her, and Anne did as he said. She was tired. This week she’d cried herself to exhaustion in this closet before creeping back to bed long after Mommy had come up and her snores rumbled through the house, to creep back into the bed she was staying in, and falling asleep with itchy eyes.“What are you going to do?” Anne asked.“I’m going to tell you a story,” Phillip said.





	Real Stories

“Everybody, I’d like you to meet our newest resident. This is Anne Wheeler.” The woman the kids in the care home were instructed to call ‘Mommy’ smiled around the playroom at the seven kids. All of them had stopped what they were doing, craning their necks to stare at the little girl Mommy had by the shoulder, and was ushering into the room. 

“She might be with us a while so I need you all to be nice to her okay?” Mommy said. Her gaze landed on an older boy who was leaning on the window seat, dark hair flopping into blue eyes. He wasn’t looking at Anne. He stared at Mommy. “Dinner will be ready in about an hour. Maybe some of you could show Anne around? She’s going to be sharing with Lettie and Goldie.” Two little girls looked up at their names, and then waved to Anne who waved back. 

“Be nice,” Mommy said again, this time directly to the boy on the window seat, before leaving the room. 

Anne stayed where she was, feeling like an alien who’d crash landed on earth. Everyone was still staring at her, and she didn’t know what to do. She was only five, and she’d spent the last few days crying and screaming and when that didn’t work she’d refused to talk or do anything. The adults had had to drag her around, from place to place. 

“Come on Anne,” said one of the girls who Anne would be sharing a room with. “We better do as Mommy says.” 

“Is she scary?” Anne asked, the words slipping out. She didn’t want to break her not-speaking pact, but it seemed pointless now. She was here. The worst had happened. 

“She’s not scary,” said another little boy, driving a toy truck up and over the carpet. “But she smacks if you anger her and she gets angry if we don’t do as we’re told.”

“She smacks?” Anne said, her voice rising. She’d never been smacked before. She’d have to start talking and doing things for herself again. 

Tears filled her eyes, and she blinked them back, already starting to get angry at herself. She didn’t want to cry in front of these children. Sure, they were all around her age, but she wasn’t going to be here for long. And she couldn’t show them any weakness. That’s what she’d been told, and she had to stick to it. She’d be out of here soon. She’d been promised that. 

“Only if you’re bad,” said Lettie, who’d come to stand beside Anne and taken her hand. She lowered her voice – not very well – and nodded at the boy on the window seat. “Phillip gets smacked a lot.” Goldie was nodding, and all the other children turned to stare at Phillip.  
He didn’t meet their gazes, but as Anne left the playroom, Lettie and Goldie chattering either side of her, she felt eyes on her back and didn’t have to turn around to know who was watching her. 

**

“You’ve been crying,” said a voice. Anne huddled up further in the corner, hiding her face in her knees. If Mommy had found her, she’d be in for it. Goldie had been caught out of bed just a week ago, and the red marks had lasted on her body all day. 

“I know it’s you in here Anne,” said the voice again. It was deeper than Mommy’s, Anne realised. She lifted her head, squinting a little at the strip of light that crept into the room from the hallway. 

“How?” Anne said, sticking her chin out. She’d made sure no one would follow her. She’d even put her pillows under her sheets to make it look like she was still in bed. She’d crawled on her hands and knees down the hallway to this coat closet so that nobody would see her. 

“You’re not as stealthy a ninja as you think,” Phillip said. He stepped into the closet, closing the door behind him and plunging them into blackness. “I’ve seen you come here all week.” There was a scuffling noise, and Anne listened to Phillip move around the closet. “I wanted to know what you were doing.”

“Why?” Anne said. She didn’t like this. She thought the closet was the perfect hiding space. No one had caught her all week and now stupid Phillip had ruined it with his stupidness. Why couldn’t he just leave her alone? 

They hadn’t even spoken since she’d been in this home, but she’d caught him staring at her several times. Yesterday she’d poked her tongue out at him, and he’d looked away. 

But she’d seen him smile. 

“I’m nosey,” Phillip said. “So, why are you crying?”

“Like I’m going to tell you!” Anne said. They were whispering, both afraid of what Mommy would do if she found them out of bed. She was downstairs, watching the TV. They could hear her laugh every now and then. 

“I answered your questions,” Phillip said, and Anne paused. That was true. He had answered her questions. 

“I’m sad,” Anne said eventually, feeling another wave of sadness pass over her. She was also scared and tired and missing her family so much it felt like she had no space left for anything else. Not to laugh with Lettie and Goldie as they made up games or to enjoy the secret cupcakes that Mommy let them have after dinner. “I miss my family.”

“Your parents died, right?” Phillip said. “I read it in your file.” A proud note strained in his voice. Anne knew Phillip could read, he did it whenever there were words around. At bus stops and street signs, and every evening he read to the boys he shared a bedroom with. Anne could hear him as she brushed her teeth and made her way to bed. “Mommy left it lying around.” 

“Yeah they died,” Anne said, angrily. Phillip had no right to just say that to her! Anne wasn’t even sure what had happened, she just knew she wouldn’t ever be able to see them again, because they’d died. 

Anne hated dying. It seemed mean that she’d never get to see them again. “They died and my brother was going to look after me, but other adults said he couldn’t and so they took me away and now I’m here, and I don’t even know if I’m going to ever see him again. He could be dead too!” Anne balled her hands up, and rubbed under her eyes. She didn’t want Phillip to actually see her crying. 

“My parents aren’t dead,” Phillip said, like he hadn’t heard Anne. “I read that in my file. They just didn’t want me.”

“I don’t blame them,”Anne said. She didn’t like Phillip. He was only seven but he acted like he was older than all of the other children there, even though there was a nine year old girl here too. But she mostly sat in her own bedroom, and didn’t talk to anybody. Anne had been told she had problems. 

Phillip laughed. “It sucks about your brother,” he said. “I’m sorry. But he’s not dead. They’d tell you if something happened to him. Probably.”

There was quiet in the closet, and then Anne spoke, admitting something she couldn’t talk about to anyone else. 

“I can’t sleep,” she said. “I lie down on that bed, and close my eyes and all I can see is my parents, and my brother, and I can’t sleep and then I start crying but I can’t let anyone see me crying. My brother told me to be tough and that we’d get through it. I’m not being very tough,” she said. She was letting her brother down. 

“Lie down,” Phillip told her, and Anne did as he said. She was tired. This week she’d cried herself to exhaustion in this closet before creeping back to bed long after Mommy had come up and her snores rumbled through the house, to creep back into the bed she was staying in, and falling asleep with itchy eyes. 

“What are you going to do?” Anne asked. 

“I’m going to tell you a story,” Phillip said. “I read one to the others and it always helps them go to sleep.”

“But you don’t have a book,” Anne said. She closed her eyes though. They felt sore. 

“I don’t need a book to tell you a story,” Phillip said, and he sounded so outraged that Anne felt a tiny smile creep over her face. 

“What would you like to hear about?” he asked. 

“Tell me about my parents,” said Anne. “Tell me about them in heaven and what they do there.”

“Okay,” Phillip said after a moment. There was some shuffling, and Anne thought he might be lying down too. “Well when your parents first arrived in heaven, they were confused. And sad. And they wanted to see you and your brother so badly, and they still do. But they can watch you. They have a big TV they can summon up whenever they want to, and tune in to see you or your brother, and sometimes they do it while they’re eating ice cream, or popcorn or….”

“Daddy didn’t like popcorn,” Anne interrupted. “He said it got stuck in his teeth.”

“Right, right,” Phillip said. “Well they can have popcorn but your Daddy says no, it gets stuck in his teeth and he has…um…”

“Oranges,” Anne said, smiling. “Daddy loved oranges.”

“Oranges it is,” Phillip said. “So he eats the oranges and your mom eats the ice-cream and they watch you and your brother. And they were watching the other day when you fell over in the kitchen and spilled your cereal all down your dress, and they both thought it was really funny but they wished they could have been the one to put the plaster on your chin. And when they’re not watching you….”  
Anne drifted off to sleep. 

*

“If Mommy hears you she’s going to lock you in the bedroom,” Phillip said to Anne as she rushed through the door, slamming it behind her. 

“See if I care,” Anne said, although she paused, waiting for Mommy’s footsteps on the stairs to come and yell at her. They weren’t smacked any more, but rather locked in their bedrooms, sometimes for hours with no one to talk to, and all their games taken away. 

“I take it the visit didn’t go well,” Phillip said. He was sitting on the bottom stair, reading a book, but he looked up at Anne as she hung her scarf over the rack. She’d probably never see it again. One of the other kids would take it and it would be lost somewhere, or left out in the garden too muddy to wear again. 

“Nope,” Anne said. “Barnum’s gone straight back to the office to do paperwork,” she rolled her eyes at the name of her social worker. 

He’d been trying to place her with a family for four years now, ever since he’d taken over her case when she turned seven. He’d told her he’d found the perfect family for her. 

They’d spent a few hours together before today, and the would-be-parents had seemed interested. Barnum was very excited this would all work. 

“What happened?” Phillip asked, putting his book down. Anne raised her eyebrow. When Phillip Caryle put his book down to talk to you, things were serious. 

“What happened was that they didn’t want to be seen with a bi-racial daughter in public,” Anne said, flopping on the stair next to Phillip. They’d never normally sit here – there were always too many kids running up and down the stairs for them to sit on them for any length of time. But it was mid-afternoon on a school day. Anne had had special permission to have the day off so she could do this – pointless – visit, and Phillip was just getting over a case of mono. He said he hadn’t gotten it from kissing, but nobody believed him.  
Anne said she did, but only because she didn’t want to find out if it was true or not. The idea of Phillip kissing some girl made her stomach turn. 

“That can’t be true,” Phillip said. 

“Well it is,” she snapped. The memories of her would-be-parents faces as everyone in the café they’d had lunch at turned to them, and then broke off into whispers still nettled her and made her break out in goose pimples. “It was horrible and awkward and they cut the day short and told me that they were very sorry but they didn’t think it was going to work out.” Anne pulled her knees up to her chest, arms around her legs. “It was stupid to think I was going to get adopted anyway. I blame that idiot, Barnum.”

Phillip chuckled. “He gets a bit over enthusiastic but you can hardly blame him. He just wants the best for us. Anyway, so they weren’t your parents. That means they’re still out there. Waiting for the right time to come into your life.”

Anne snorted. “They’re taking their time,” she said. It would all be so much easier if she could just live with her brother. He was of age now to legally look after her, but he was living in a tiny apartment and could barely afford to eat and pay rent every month. As much as she wanted to live with him, it wasn’t fair to put that on him. Anne needed a lot of school stuff, and 3 meals a day. And she liked her bed now. She didn’t want to have to sleep on a mattress on the floor, like he was doing.  
Plus, she’d need looking after when school ended. At the moment her brother was taking work whenever he could, which meant late nights, and early mornings. She couldn’t be left alone. 

“I never really thought they’d be your parents anyway,” Phillip said. Anne rolled her eyes. Phillip was always saying he’d thought something or other – but only after the event had actually happened. He never thought to share his thoughts beforehand. 

“I’ve always pictured your parents differently. They were stuck up.”

“How did you picture my parents?” Anne said. She uncurled herself, letting her legs stretch out on the floor in front of her, and resting her eyes. She could tell Phillip was about to go off on a story, and over the years, she’d let his voice lull her to sleep almost nightly. The stories he’d told her had changed over the years; from her parents in heaven and her brother the warrior knight who was fighting all the dragons to get her back, to how the mean girls at school were going to get caught by karma and end up in horrible situations. 

But now they were all about the life Anne should be leading with the parents he knew were just waiting to adopt her. He talked about Christmas, and their big real tree with the sparkly decorations and the bow wrapped presents underneath. Their lazy weekend mornings with pancakes and syrup – Anne’s favourite – and the excitable dog who would yap to get up on the bed and curl up by her feet. He told her about the parents who would be in the crowd when she left high school, and how they’d be so excited to see her leave and how sad they’d be to wave her off to university. 

“Your Dad’s a professor of something nerdy at a university. He spends a lot of time in his study, on his laptop, but he always comes when you call even if it’s just to show him a dance you made up. He’s thinning a little on his head, but growing facial hair to make up for it. He wears those tweed jackets with elbow patches. He pushes his glasses up his face every couple of minutes. He loves his family with every part of his being.”

“And my Mom? What’s she like?” Anne asked. Phillip always had this way of bringing her imagination to life. With just a few words she could picture these people, these moments, almost like they were real memories she had that just hadn’t happened yet. 

“She’s the best,” Phillip said, a smile over his face. “She’s kind and has a big heart, though you don’t want to get on the wrong side of her. Total mamma bear. If someone hurts you, she’s going to take them down. She’s got curly hair, so she knows how to fix yours. She’s creative and does yoga in the mornings. You’ll get into it with her too, even thought you hate getting up earlier than you have to in the mornings. She loves you and your father like nobody else in the world does.”

“They sound nice,” Anne said. She turned her head till she was facing the ceiling. If she narrowed her eyes a little everything went blurry. She could pretend. 

Pretend that this was her house, her wallpaper on the walls. That it was her kids out at school today, while her and her husband had a day off work to run errands. She could pretend they’d be going to see the grandparents later, those ones Phillip had just conjured out of nowhere for her. 

The only thing she wouldn’t change, she realised as a dull thud landed in her stomach and she felt the heat of another body next to hers, lost in his own thoughts, was Phillip. 

*

“Anne Wheeler? Holy shit!” Anne’s face shot up, and her mouth hung open as she stared at the guy in front of her. “What are you doing here?”

“Having a party,” she said, twisting her body around to try and fight the guy currently marching her into the police station off again. “What does it look like?”

“I brought this one in for B&E,” said the guy behind her. “She was caught trying to break into her ex boyfriend’s house.”

“I wasn’t breaking in,” Anne said. “I had a key.”

“They why was the window broken?” The guy – okay, the cop – asked. Anne stayed mute. Admitting that she threw the rock because she was pissed probably wouldn’t go down well in a police station. And her ex wasn’t going to press charges. He wouldn’t. He just wanted to scare her, show her that he had all the power. 

God, she couldn’t believe she’d ever dated a creep like him. That was it. No more rich dudes. She’d stay firmly in her lane from now on. 

“I’ll take this one from here,” said Phillip Carlyle, as he took her arm from the cop behind her, leading her away from everyone staring. Anne felt like she was back at her first day at Mommy’s house, that foster home she’d spent seven years at before being moved on again. And then again. And then countless other times until she finally left care at 18 years old. 

Phillip let her into an interview room, closing the door behind them.  
“Wow,” he said. “I never thought I’d see you again.”

“Take a picture it will last longer,” Anne said.

She couldn’t look at him. It hurt too much. She didn’t want to remember the nights he told her stories to get her to sleep, or the pictures of perfect family life he conjured up that trickled through her mind until she’d realised they were literally just stories. She shouldn’t have put so much hope in them. 

“Hey, is there any need for the attitude?” Phillip asked. He undid the handcuffs, and she massaged her wrists. 

“I’ve just been arrested for trying to get back my things from a crappy ex boyfriend, so yeah, there’s a need,” Anne said. 

She flopped into the metal chair facing an imposing glass window. That was where other people stood and watched the criminals in this room be questioned. 

Anne stopped looking at it. “So, you’re a cop, huh? Weird. I never had you down for someone who followed the law.” 

Phillip had been the one in the home who’d encouraged them all to steal when they were little. Only small things like sweets or pens from the mall, or a couple of dollars from Mommy’s purse every now and then. And if he tried to lecture her about throwing the rock, she was going to remind him about the time he threw a table through the school window. They’d said it had been down to his ‘anger issues’ and the fact that he’d had a rough start in childhood, and he’d got off with a warning and counselling sessions. 

He’d been so smug about that. 

“Yeah,” Phillip said, rubbing the back of his neck. Anne’s stomach clenched. He’d always done that when he was nervous. When he’d taken the blame for something one of the other kids at the home had done. When he’d told her he was getting adopted. “Well my parents thought it would be a good thing for me to get into, and I have to say they were right. I love it.”

“Really?” Anne said, raising an eyebrow. 

Phillip laughed. 

“God, no, I hate it. It’s a terrible job, there’s so much crime and hardly anything has a happy ending.” He sighed, sitting in the chair opposite hers. “But my parents pressured me into it, and I was still too happy and grateful that they’d adopted me, so I did it for them. And it’s not all bad. The guys I work with are great. And I’m working on a novel, so you know once that obviously gets published, I can give this up.”

“Things worked out with the guys who adopted you then?” Anne said. That whole time felt like a black spot in her memory. She recalled the sudden moment she realised she liked Phillip, that he was more than someone she’d grown up with to her. 

She remembered the feeling of falling when he’d told her, a year later, in the closet he’d talked her to sleep in so many times that there was a family Barnum had spoken to him about. And then a couple of weeks later as all the children in Mommy’s home had waved Phillip off, Mommy even shedding a tear or two before yelling at them all to get back inside.

“Yeah. They’re my parents. I go around for Sunday lunches and Mom does my laundry every weekend. How about you?” He asked. “Did you ever -?” Anne shook her head. 

“A few weeks after you left, they moved me from Mommy’s. It was only ever meant to be for young kids anyway, so once I hit thirteen I had to go.” They’d made a special exception for Phillip. Anne had never known his story other than that his parents hadn’t wanted him, but he seemed to worm him way into Mommy’s heart, so much that she bent the rules for him. 

Anne didn’t really blame her. “After that I just got shuttled around the system. Left care at 18, got my own flat, a job. Still see my brother and his wife on the weekends.” She stopped. Phillip didn’t need to know anything more about her life. 

He wasn’t a part of it any more. 

“I’m sorry,” he said. 

“Naw, don’t be,” she said. “It’s my life and I don’t have to answer to anyone. I like that.”

“I meant for disappearing on you,” he said, quietly. “Once I left, I didn’t know how to see you. I felt bad. Bad that I’d found what I’d always told you you’d get. Bad that those weekend mornings, and parents who loved you I’d told you about were my reality and not yours. I tried to make them for you, and I couldn’t. So I dropped out of your life. Didn’t realise you’d come crashing back into mine.”

“Hey, you were just trying to help a scared, tired, kid sleep,” Anne said, shifting on the chair. She didn’t like this. Didn’t like him talking about those worlds he’d made like they were nothing. Anne had lived in those for most of her childhood. It was okay that she didn’t have the parents, or the dog, or anything he told her. 

She had him, and his words, and that was enough. 

“I should get on with my job and see what I can do for you today then,” Phillip said, standing. “I’m glad I’ve seen you Anne. You were always the one I thought about.”

Anne waited until he’d left the room to say “You too.”

*

The invitation arrives almost a year later. It plops onto Anne’s threadbare doormat, thick and heavy and she thinks at first that someone has the wrong address. But it’s her name on the envelope, so she opens it, and swallows the lump in her throat as she reads. 

*

The rain pelts the sidewalk, but Anne rushes into it, grateful for the coldness on her reddening cheeks.  
“Anne.” Phillip is behind her, but Anne can’t face him. 

“How could you?” she asks, clenching her hands. She doesn’t want to let him see her cry. She’s never, not once, not even in all the time at Mommy’s, actually cried in front of him. 

Though you wouldn't know that. 

Not if you had just been inside, watching the newest hit play, ‘Mommy’s House,’ written by acclaimed playwright Phillip Caryle. 

Watching Anne’s story being played by actors on stage. And played wrong, she’d like to add. 

Because she hadn’t been that scared. And she hadn’t been that nervous, or any of the things he’d written. ‘Annie’ the girl in the play was a quivering wreck, jumpy whenever anyone approached her and crying to herself in the closet. She couldn’t make friends with the other children at the home because she just wanted to be back with her brother. 

But that wasn’t the worst part. 

“I know those are your stories,” Anne said now, fighting to keep her voice calm. “I know those are your words, and they belong to you, but I felt like they belonged to me too, Phillip. Those worlds were made to keep me calm and were about my parents. You might have made him into a warrior, who fought evil to get me back, but he was my brother, and those were my parents you made up Phillip. I don’t know, I guess I just thought those stories, and those worlds were just for us. I didn’t realise you were going to share them with everyone who’d pay to hear them.” 

She was shaking. She’d left her jacket inside, on the back of the chair. She’d been so proud of him when she’d read the invite. His book had been a big hit, but it was an action packed thriller she couldn’t get into. 

But this play. She thought it would be about him. His time in care, the friends he made.  
Instead he’d made it all about her. 

“Anne -,”

“No. You could have warned me. A text or an email. I get it. Maybe the little girl with the dead parents, who grew up to get arrested is a better story than the guy who got adopted at 14, and became a cop, but a warning would have been nice. That’s all I’m saying.”

“I didn’t realise,” Phillip said, his hands twisting together. He wasn’t the little boy who made up stories for her anymore. They were both adults, and she had to accept that. 

“I didn’t realise it was all about you until I saw your face tonight. I thought I was writing about my experiences in Mommy’s House. And then I saw you arrive, and I saw it through your eyes, and I can’t say anything except I’m sorry and that…that it’s because to me you were Mommy’s House. When I think of that place I think of you, and I think of the nights I’d make up stories for you in the closet. I think of you smiling for the first time after you arrived, when we got the Christmas decorations out, and I think of you running towards the front door every month when your brother arrived to take you out for the day. I think of how I used to spend every single day thinking about the story I’d make up for you each night, how I could make them better, how I could help you. I think of how I wasn’t making up the parents I thought you’d be adopted by – but rather the parents I thought you’d make. At least the mom part. The dad part, I don’t know where he came from.”

“You thought of me?” Anne asked. The rain was coming down harder now, but the crowds that had been pressed outside earlier had faded to an empty space. They were the only two people out here now. 

“Every day since the first,” Phillip said. “This wasn’t how I wanted to tell you.”

“No,” Anne said. “I like it this way. I wish you hadn’t written a play about me, but I guess its proof that what you’re saying is real.”

“It is real,” Phillip said, taking a step closer. 

His suit was wet through, his dark hair flopping down over his face. “Everything else I’ve told you has been made up, but this isn’t. I love you Anne Wheeler. I’ve loved you for years.” He took her in his arms, cradling her face in his hands. “I’m sorry the stories I made for you are now out for everyone to hear, but if you want, we can make new stories. Real ones this time.”

“Of course, I want you,” Anne said. “I love you too, Phillip. How could I not?”

She kissed him then, with all the burning longing she’d been feeling since she was eleven years old, her hands gripping the shoulders of his jacket, his hands running through her hair, both picturing the real stories they’d go out and create. 

Together.


End file.
